ARTISTS TO KNOW: NADA ESMAEEL
Photography: Dana White
Creative Direction & Production: Bianca Jean-Pierre & Nabila Wirakusumah
Nada Esmaeel’s work is alive and vibrant, rich in detail and color. In addition to paintings, illustrations and animations, she has also designed 3D gaming environments where woven rugs hang from the walls and colored lanterns are strung across an intimate courtyard. But in each of these varied mediums, the subject is almost always Palestinian people and their culture.
Throughout her work, Nada renders traditional clothing like the beautifully embroidered Tatreez and the Shatweh headdresses in dozens of technicolor iterations. The same can be said of the Islamic architecture she features in her pieces: doors and windows with distinct wrought iron flourishes and shapes show the diversity seen just strolling through the streets of Jerusalem.
Nada Esmaeel interviewed below by Bianca Jean-Pierre (SHEER Founder) and Nabila Wirakusumah (SHEER Creative Director)
Nabila: What I personally love about your work is how much your background and culture comes through. I would love to hear more about your background and where you grew up.
Nada: I grew up in Charlotte, North Carolina and I come from a pretty conservative Muslim community. That was most of my upbringing until I was eighteen and went to college.
My family is originally from Palestine. My grandparents left during the Nakba after 1948. Their families grew up in Kuwait and then we grew up in America so I'm a second generation removed from Palestine. It’s been a journey to reconnect with my heritage and that's a lot of what I explore in my art and I educate myself through my work.
I grew up Muslim in a very distinct community and my work has been both influenced by that and kind of in opposition to that in terms of what I want to include and exclude in my art.
Bianca: What causes you to share certain things versus others? How do you distinguish what you lean into about your culture versus what you don't?
Nada: I grew up very religious and I define myself more as spiritual now. My understanding and connection with our culture was definitely more influenced by religion more than anything else. Part of me, especially growing up in such a conservative community, found it to be very overwhelming so I wanted to distance myself from that as I got older. During my college years, which is when I started making art, I felt a really big need to reconnect with my culture but in a way that felt more aligned.
I wanted my art to be inclusive and represent different areas in Palestinian culture because all kinds of Palestinians exist, from Muslims to Christians. There were Jewish Palestinians prior to 1948 and Palestinians that live different lifestyles that might not be as mainstream. That's what I want my artwork to include while exploring the variety that exists within the culture. It's not just this homogenized Arab culture.
When it comes to dresses, for example, I wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference in prints between a Lebanese traditional dress or a Palestinian traditional dress, because I didn't know there were any. Understanding and learning about those differences and what makes my culture unique is what I want to emphasize and bring to the attention of others.
Nabila: I see this attention given to the crafts of Palestine in your work like tatreez and embroidery and textiles. Hearing you talk about wanting to explore your heritage outside of the religious aspect, you gravitate more towards craftsmanship. Was there a relative involved in crafts or an object or book you found that drew you into these themes?
Nada: During the journey of reconnecting with my people and my heritage, I got a lot of different books on Palestinian identity and textiles. I was looking up a lot of images online of Palestine because I've never been there up until two years ago and the aesthetics are undeniably strong. We've all seen images of Jerusalem and it's very compelling and beautiful. I've always been influenced by Islamic architecture and because I've been to Turkey a couple of times, that influence in the architecture really drew me in. Also, seeing how that manifests in Jerusalem and in Palestine has always been an interest of mine.
I've always been a fan of embroidery and have been really appreciative of that. When I went to Palestine two years ago, I went to all the little shops in the Old City where they have traditional thobes. I would spend an hour or two in those shops just looking at all the dresses and embroideries and I would go for the older styles and want to know how much they were. The guy that ran the shop would tell me I have a good eye because people usually go for the newer ones. There’s been a really big reemergence of tatreez as an art and an online community that is super active about preserving that part of the culture and sharing it. I can see it, especially the last couple of years, really flourishing and growing. It's really cool to make artwork alongside that reemergence of people wanting to get reconnected with their culture and practices of old art while making things for themselves and for each other.
Nabila: Are the fabrics in the photos the ones that you bought on your trip?
Nada: Yeah, the one on my lap was a hand-stitched one that is sleeveless, which is pretty uncommon.
“I wanted my art to be inclusive and represent different areas in Palestinian culture because all kinds of Palestinians exist, from Muslims to Christians. There are Jewish Palestinians and Palestinians that live different lifestyles that might not be as mainstream. That’s what I want my artwork to include while exploring the variety that exists within the culture. It’s not just this homogenized Arab culture. ”
Bianca: You mentioned that you started making art in college and how much exploring your culture influences your art. What made you decide to go down this digital illustration route versus more traditional art mediums to represent traditions like tatreez?
Nada: I went to school and majored in International Studies. I went to my local community college at the same time to take art classes because they wouldn't let me take them at my university. I took figure drawing classes and really loved working traditionally with those, but then I would go back home and I didn't really have the space to do that. Digital art was the perfect solution to being able to make art without the limitations. I really enjoy doing traditional art and I really value it, but digital art gives me the ability to do what I want with more accessibility.
One of my favorite Palestinian artists is Sliman Mansour and he's maybe one of the most famous ones. He creates these beautiful traditional paintings of Palestinian culture and grief and celebration. I wanted to make something that felt a little more modern and more relevant to me in terms of the kind of art that I was into. That's also part of the reason why I gravitated towards this style. I wanted it to be something younger people would feel closer to.
Bianca: That's a really important distinction and helps your art feel more timely. There are more conversations around the history of Palestine and traditions of Palestine and I find that younger generations are more engaged and more intrigued to learn. Your art speaking to that is in perfect alignment.
Nabila: There's something about how we tell the stories and reminding people that this is a thriving culture.
Nada: Yeah, absolutely. I've delved into 3d modeling and video game design since I’ve never seen Palestinian art represented in that kind of way. I'm not saying it hasn't been done, it's just not really popular. I wanted to try and see how cool that representation would be but more than just for representation’s sake, but especially for our culture and history that is being erased. The result of occupation and colonialism means for some that the culture doesn’t exist. It feels right to keep the more modern and contemporary representations of the culture.
One day I’d like to make a video game but I don't know if I'll have the chops for it.
Nabila: Are you a gamer?
Nada: I wouldn't call myself a gamer, but I really appreciate the art of video games.
Bianca: It’s a great way to tell your story, especially for younger audiences.
Nada: That's exactly my train of thought when it comes to why something like that would be important or valuable. I would love to try to make a Palestinian based video game around our culture and history or just a simple story about a simple family. I'm thinking of different ways to tell those kinds of stories that would be more engaging for younger people.
Bianca: It's really great to know that you’ve visited Palestine and seen a lot of these fabrics in person while also pulling inspiration from books. I noticed your illustrations are based on actual photos that already exist, whether it's a photo you've seen online or from a history book.These designs we find in tatreez are so intricate and the detailing and patterns are just so beautiful. What's your creative process in bringing these to life digitally?
Nada: Thank you. Yeah, I look at photos a lot for reference. What I end up drawing is either a combination of a few different poses. Sometimes I'll take dresses that I find in books and use it on different poses that I find online of someone wearing a different kind of dress. What I really look for are unique dresses that are not commonly known as Palestinian. Those are the ones that really draw my attention because it's not typical.
I also look for a lot of colors, or ones that I can really saturate when I'm drawing because my art is very color driven. I have this new book called A Treasury Of Stitches, and it has a bunch of motifs, their names, and where they might be from or how to stitch them. There's also this great website called Tirazain.com, which has the names and the breakdowns of different motifs so that's also been very helpful when it comes to seeing the motif itself for reference. To not only learn about it, but also to draw it right because a lot of these photos are very zoomed out so you can't really see what the stitch itself is.
I like to combine different pieces and try to figure out a compelling composition for them. Then I'm able to incorporate some other elements of Palestinian culture, whether in terms of resistance or nature, to create a mosaic of sorts or a stitching of different parts of Palestine into one piece.
Bianca: In addition to fabrics, you focus on a lot of architecture and other signifiers of culture outside of clothing. Whether it be people's homes, food, monuments and other elements. How do you determine different ways to visually represent Palestine?
Nada: That's a great follow up question because what I learned while I was starting to make this kind of art is that the motifs found in the dresses usually represent the surroundings of whatever area or town they’re in. For example, one of the pieces that I'm going to have at the Affordable Art Fair called Vibrant Harvest, features three very colorful dresses. A lot of these different motifs represent the crops that were available to them. The embroidery itself sometimes influences what I choose to incorporate floating around the figures. It has to do directly with the heritage and the context that these dresses were made in and what they already represent.
Bianca: That's beautiful. I love that connection.
Nabila: Looking through your art, I’m really stunned by both the level of detail but also the variation in showing the different types of dresses. I draw from my own culture in Indonesia and I have a hard time doing that research from here. Do you ever feel isolated from this place that you're trying to draw inspiration from? And are there roadblocks to doing this research, especially in the detail that you're getting into?
Nada: Absolutely. There are a lot of roadblocks because it's a culture that is actively being erased. The reason that it hasn’t been erased is because of Palestinians' own persistence in keeping it alive, documenting it, and doing the work to preserve it and have people know it.
When I first looked up dresses for reference on Pinterest, I would search “Palestinian dresses” and so many different styles would come up. So many of them wouldn't even be Palestinian. They were all very different motifs and styles. But who am I to say this dress is Palestinian and this one isn’t because I’m not a researcher, but I'm doing my best. I'm not an expert so that's where the books became a big help. With books, it’s not just random people posting online and claiming one thing or another, but there are sources. Books have been a very big help when it comes to those roadblocks.
“Wafa Ghnaim, who I believe works at The MET for the preservation of Palestinian textiles is a big resource. Her job is to correctly identify pieces as Palestinian that were previously mislabeled as different cultures. There are efforts being made and researchers dedicated to remedy that issue. ”
Nabila: Where are you finding these books?
Nada: I find them online. There's a site that I got a few of them from based in Cyprus. It's usually an international shipping situation.
The tatreez community online is a very big help as well, because there are researchers that really know what they're talking about and have done the work and serve as a guide. Wafa Ghnaim, who I believe works at The MET for the preservation of Palestinian textiles is a big resource. Her job is to correctly identify pieces as Palestinian that were previously mislabeled as different cultures. There are efforts being made and researchers dedicated to remedy that issue. When I'm drawing I always want to double check and triple check that what I'm representing is what I say it is, because it’s not cool to misrepresent cultures.
As for the emotional component, that is definitely something that I've dealt with. Feeling disconnected to the culture is something I've dealt with a lot. Not particularly when I'm making art, because if anything, that makes me feel more connected. Growing up, the culture wasn't really something I had a grasp on because I was a second-generation Palestinian. My grandparents didn't really talk about the expulsion. They went to countries where being Palestinian wasn't a celebrated thing. If anything, you were a burden or a refugee in their country. For some families it manifests as not talking about it so much and it's in the past, which is devastating. I don't even think it necessarily reflects how they felt inside, but it's more of them acclimating to their new environments. So for future generations, you become a little more distanced from it as a result.
It wasn't until college where, especially in International Studies, Palestine comes up quite a lot. I definitely felt the pressure and obligation to understand where I’m from more. When I went on my trip two years ago, it was a very emotional time. It was very strange for me, because while I am Palestinian, and my grandparents are Palestinian, and my parents are Palestinian, I have a different experience from the people living there under occupation. That difference felt very loud when I was there. And it made me question what my experience as a Palestinian is. How can it be comparable to there?
That's why I've never really focused on Palestinian pain and grief in my work. While it’s present in my grandparents and my family, it's not my personal experience. I don't want to talk about something that I don't have personal experience with. My experience as a diaspora Palestinian might be a little more nostalgic in the way that I view it. I've gotten that feedback on my work that might be interpreted as a little bit nostalgic. I was working through a lot of those feelings when I went to visit. It was a really, really incredible trip, but also very emotional and humbling for that reason.
“Growing up, the culture wasn’t really something I had a grasp on because I was a second-generation Palestinian. My grandparents didn’t really talk about the expulsion. They went to countries where being Palestinian wasn’t a celebrated thing. If anything, you were a burden or a refugee in their country. For some families it manifests as not talking about it so much and it’s in the past, which is devastating.”
Bianca: That's a great point about that disconnect between people living in their homeland versus the diaspora. My mom is Haitian but I was born here in the states as a Haitian-American and was very close to the culture. But when I visited Haiti, there really was that disconnect between their definition of what it means to be Haitian vs. mine.
Nada: I just understand that it’s a natural consequence and the intention behind colonialism. That helped me overcome that feeling, or at least come to terms with it, in a way where I don't feel shame or guilt because it is easy to feel that way.
Bianca: Even thinking about the Westernization of having freedom or privilege, where it's concentrated in certain places, and you’re told that you need to abandon your homeland in order to experience any kind of feeling of privilege or freedom. Even with the media, we see a lot of our homelands being portrayed as barren and hopeless and those are just the systems at play. It's not our fault. It's not who we are. It's just the system, like you mentioned.
Nabila: I'm so interested in what you said about recognizing that you aren’t culpable for these forces of colonialism, but at the same time, feeling a sense of duty to then engage with the culture as well. To me being an artist is really committing to that engagement with your culture, especially seeing the subject of your work. What was that transition for you in deciding to be an artist?
Bianca: And you're a full-time artist now, which is huge!
Nada: It wasn't long after I graduated university that I started selling my art. There was a local shop in Charlotte where I sold my work. Once I was able to make some income from it, I decided to lean more into my art. I felt like there was a spark there that I needed to focus on.
At first the art I was making was not cultural at all. It was mostly what I called journal art. It was a bunch of journal excerpts and line drawings.. It was more self-expressive in that way, dealing with snippets of anxiety and depression. Then I slowly started to transition into that cultural art during that difficult time, because I felt this really big disconnect from me and my people. That was not the cause of all of the issues I had at the time, but it was something that I really craved the community for and wanted to connect with.
Seeing people's response to my more cultural art and how it resonated with them really motivated me to stick with it and keep going, which also motivated me to learn more about it. It just kind of snowballed from there.
Nabila: I can see this processing of emotions in your older art but I also see the connection to the style that you have now.
“It was very strange for me, because while I am Palestinian, and my grandparents are Palestinian, and my parents are Palestinian, I have a different experience from the people living there under occupation. That difference felt very loud when I was there. And it made me question what my experience as a Palestinian is. How can it be comparable to there?”
Nada: Moving forward, I want to try to reincorporate that kind of approach to my art that I make about Palestine. These last few months, post-October, have been a very tumultuous time for the Palestinian community. It's been very difficult to process my relation to the rest of the world and to the people around me. That's something that I've wanted to make art about that isn't just traditional, celebratory art. I definitely want to go back to that approach of processing feelings with words and imagery in a piece in order to take a different route on how I talk about this.
I still don't quite know how to make art about what is happening and that's part of the reason that I told you I've been kind of off of Instagram. I understand my place and my value as an artist representing my culture despite attempts to destroy it, but there's also a sense of obligation to say something more with my art.
Bianca: How do you stay grounded as an artist that is so deeply committed to representing Palestine when there's so much revisionist history around the culture you grew up with and know?
Nada: I think it will likely just take a different approach and for the better to push me as an artist. And about revisionism, I try to just ignore that kind of response whenever I do get it to my art. I don't put any value or stock in people that have that opinion. I know that my art isn't for them. My art is, first and foremost, for other Palestinians. And then for people that aren't familiar with the culture and want to learn more about it. Anyone that tries to erase it or wants to claim that it doesn't exist, I just don't have the energy to give towards them. It’s not worth it.
“My art is, first and foremost, for other Palestinians. And then for people that aren’t familiar with the culture and want to learn more about it. Anyone that tries to erase it or wants to claim that it doesn’t exist, I just don’t have the energy to give towards them. It’s not worth it. ”
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Photography by Nabila Wirakusumah
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